Dunninald weddings

The June wedding of Nicholas Stansfeld and Annabel Macmillan was the first at Dunninald for 133 years.

AN INSIGHT into family wedding celebrations is on offer to visitors at Dunninald Castle this month, just a few weeks after the first wedding at the estate for 133 years.

The castle and gardens are open throughout July but season has started slowly at Dunninald this year, not helped by the unsettled weather.

But Jonathan Stansfeld, whose family lives at the castle, said the new wedding exhibition has proved popular with visitors.

He said: “We try to think of a new subject each year for the small exhibitions displayed in two rooms. This year seems to have been the summer of the weddings, so we have put on an exhibition called ‘Two Hundred Years of Family Weddings’.”

The property was last bought and sold in 1811, so this year marks the bicentenary of the purchase. There is a fine archive in the house with 200 years of papers relating to the family and to the estate.

Mr Stansfeld added: “It is not too difficult to search the archive and pick out interesting and relevant items.”

The estate was bought in 1811 by Peter Arkley who was married at Dunninald three years later. His son, Patrick, married a Swiss girl in 1838, and his granddaughter, Eliza, married Captain John

Stansfeld in 1871. Seven years later Eliza’s sister, Mary Arkley, was married at Dunninald and until this year that was the last family marriage at the house.

Last month the wedding of Nicholas Stansfeld and Annabel Macmillan took place in the castle’s walled garden.

Mr Stansfeld said: “It was a lovely occasion. All four of my grandchildren had jobs to do and they performed beautifully. The weather was kind and everyone enjoyed themselves”.